Leaking Capacitor on the Motherboard?

Hi guys,

I'm having some crash/hangup problems with my Clevo m860tu lately. It's an old model but unfortunately I can't afford the money to replace it at the moment.

I could track down the problem to the hardware level and exclude the RAM and Hard Disc. The VGA memory has passed a VGA memtest and the GPU passed a 20min stress test.

I'm having some better results (no hangups till now) running on Battery power, so my clue at the moment is either a bad PSU or some capacitor that only operates when running from external power being damaged.

I opened the Notebook and on the capacitor next to the CPU (25V 680uA) I saw some orange sorta fluid that reminds me to hardened dried out toothpaste, although harder (could be some sort of glue as well). See pic here: http://i45.tinypic.com/5lvrpx.jpg

I know that bad Capacitors usually bulk up and this one looks perfectly fine and its hard for me to imagine it's leaking out of the side.

If anyone has any Input on this I'd greatly appreciate it.

~Onne

 

That's exactly what it looks like, a failed capacitor.

Capacitor Lab - Visual Signs of Capacitor Failure - Bulging and Leaking

 

Thanks for your post.

I mailed Clevo, if I'm lucky they can tell me what exactly does that capacitor do. If it's related to the external PSU in some way it could directly explain why so far my Notebook hasn't hang up when on Battery power (running high performance power plan).

I have checked the web before posting but the Capacitor doesn't seem to be bulked up and the fluids I saw leaking on all the pics looked as if they would be coming out from the bottom, where the connectors are, rather than the side. Or maybe in my cause cause the Capacitor is bend over by default?

 

Well for the most part motherboards don't go sideways, upside down, etc... but in laptops it is possible to have that happen. It's entirely possible the laptop was sideways when this happened causing the fluids to go the way they did. I'm in no way an expert electronics guy though, so don't take my word as law, but that's what it looks like to me and my experience.

 

In the position the Laptop is most of the time it should have leaked to the cover that is placed at the bottom of the Notebook instead of onto the motherboard, but well maybe it just happened when transporting even tho I only move it around 1 time/month. I do study electrical engineering but unfortunately I have no experience with faulty capacitors but I know people who could help me replace it for some cents

 

It's a blurry picture, but the orange stuff on the side of the capacitor is glue. Sometimes capacitors will fail from the bottom, but it wouldn't make that big of a mess. If you are really concerned about that particular cap, the best thing would be to dissassemble what you need to have a look at it's bottom. Sometimes cold-solder breaks where the capacitor is soldered to the PCB can happen also. If you can see where the capacitor is soldered (probably on the other side of the PCB) then you might find that one of the pins move in the solder joint when you giggle the capacitor slightly.

 

The capacitor looks fine to me.

 

It looks normal, the gunk looks like glue holding the capacitor to the board, on a failing capacitor the top will bulge and the electrolight will leak from the bottom their is a rubber bung where the wires come out and it will look like it is pushed out a bit.

John.

 

arg8, 4st3risk and John, thanks for your input on this. It indeed looks like the capacitor is fine.

I showed the picture to our Engineer at university that helps putting together the Experiment boards and he told me pretty much the same. I was also told that since the Notebook is running fine so far on battery power I most certainly should be looking into a problem with the Notebook PSU directly.

So I got 2 options:

A. Test the PSU with a multimeter. However since its a random problem most likely related to the stress put on the PSU during gaming, I'm really uncertain how I should do the measurement accordingly.

B. Buy a new PSU. Anyone has a good idea of what manufacturers could be good. I know I can order one from Clevo for about 60 Euros but I have seen some on amazon fro 30-40.

~Onne

 

Did you swith your windows power profiles to performance and try all the same settings as if it was plugged-in, when you run on battery. Maybe try that first to make sure the power demand is the same whether you're on battery or plugged-in. If you still don't have any crashes with all settings maked on battery, then it would make sense that it's likely a power brick or motherboard DC input buck converters issue.

 

Yes I made sure for it to be the same as when running on external power. What do you mean by power brick or motherboard DC input buck converters?

To note I run my Notebook without the battery in when I'm at home. The issue with the freeze happened when running without the battery in and when the battery is in, but hasn't yet presented when running solely on battery power.

 

PSU can be pretty general. It can refer to the AC/DC adapter you plug from the wall to your laptop (the "power brick"). It can also refer to the power distribution circuits on the motherboard that convert the 20V DC (or whaterever voltage) input from the wall adapter, to multiple voltages (+5V, -5V, +3.3V, etc...) for various subsystems (CPU, GPU, USB, battery charger...). So if it's a power supply issue, it can still stem from either inside or outside the laptop.

But definitely suspect your DC wall adapter at this point. They tend to be cheap and can have relatively high failure rates. You can always carefully crack it open along the seam. You might find the bad capacitor is in the brick... I've fixed a few that way in the past. If you do find a bad capacitor, source high quality components while your at it and replace them all (at least the big electrolytic capacitors). No use sponsoring cheap crp. just to run into the same problem down the road.

 

Okay,I guess I'm gonna try opening the AC/DC adapter and hope I don't zap myself.